Page 108 of Light

“Did anyone get the license plate on that cataclysm?” I summon enough vigor to actually laugh that one out. “Starsky? Hutch? Hondo?”

Reece snorts and rolls to face me. “Nobody here by that name, ma’am,” he murmurs while propping his head in a hand. “But if you’ll settle for a guy named Richards, who can’t wait to get his wife off the ground and into a real bed…”

“Hmmmm.” I get it out before he dips in past the kids, claiming my lips in a kiss that perfectly matches the swell of the Swan Lake overture, now drifting across the plaza. I sigh against his mouth, feeling as light and flimsy as a ballerina, surrendering myself to passion that’s as new as it is familiar, as beautiful and blinding as it is comforting and safe. “If you completely insist, Mr. Richards.”

“Oh, I insist. And a hell of a lot more.” His growl curls through me like a mix of sawdust and fairy sprinkles. The roughness of his lust is more vibrant than ever but possess a new enchantment that I still can’t figure out—and perhaps don’t want to. Maybe with Faline finally absent, this is some of his old bad-boy side emerging. Or maybe I’m seeing a whole new Reece Richards. A man of unleashed confidence and unhindered joy.

A man of ultimate freedom.

Of untethered love.

“Okay, wait.” I issue the command as the kids spring away and he moves in for a new kiss. I stress the point by pushing the man over, pinning him to the breezeway again. Reece gapes with mock outrage, but his pleading look to the kids only gets him another rousing round of “We Are Family” from them. I have no idea when or where they learned it, but the tune actually blends quite well with the ballet’s overture. The three of them are now leaping and twirling to both melodies, though Lux interrupts his rhythm for his karate kicks and ninja moves.

“I guess…I’m waiting, then?” my man finally murmurs against the pad of my index finger. I run my adoring touch up and over his nose and then back down until I’m tracing the bold angles of his sexy, stubbled chin. “Or other things?” he suggests, cranking his smirk until his dimples are gorgeous craters. “Like blatantly worshiping? Endlessly Adoring? Eternally loving?”

I hold his face in place for my fierce stamp of a kiss. “Oh, that’s my favorite one.”

His grin spreads wider. “Mine too.” He scoops a hand around the back of my neck. “It’ll always be my greatest superpower, Bunny.”

I give him another hard kiss, this time lingering to push my tongue between his lips. We both moan from the instant—and much-needed—charge the bond brings, along with the flow of other emotional energies. Connection. Inspiration. Completion.

But as we drag apart, I admit the difficulty of believing that last one. Completion. “Can it really be true?” I challenge in a fervent whisper. “Zeus? Are we really done with her now? For good?”

Reece hitches up onto one elbow. “I’m torn between keeping it to a whisper and ordering a hundred skywriters to blast it across the sky.”

I nod. “It feels…pretty weird,” I confess. “Maybe very weird.”

“But you know what would feel even weirder?” he returns.

I tilt my head, instantly mirroring the new gravity behind his gaze. While I’ll never be able to translate his thoughts as he does mine, his new intent is pretty damn clear. “Watching Faline bust out of that hole and then go back with our daughters in her arms?”

“Nooooo!” Ira tears away from her sister and Lux and sprints back over with terror reclaiming her face. “Not back in ground! Not with Madre Faline!”

By the time the girl is done with her sobbing protest, Lux and Mis have joined to embrace her from behind. Reece pushes toward her, tenderly thumbing her tears away from her face. “Hey, hey, heeeyyy,” he croons, finally drawing her in for a strong and comforting clutch. “Nothing like that is ever going to happen again, sweetness.” He pulls back and ducks his head, securing her gaze with the soft strength of his own before shifting his hold to the side of her head instead. “But you already know that, don’t you, Ira?” He grunts in satisfaction as she nods with skittish bobs. “Now tell me why you know it—because I think your mama wants to hear this part too.”

Before I can voice my concurrence to that, or even before Ira can pull in a preparatory breath for her account, Lux stabs his arm into the air like he’s practicing New York cab hailing. “Ohhhhh! I know, I know, I know!”

“Lux Mitchell Tycin.” Reece wags a rebuking finger. “I asked your sister this one, not you.”

And I’m silently snickering, watching the man walk right into that one, as Ira bounds around and grabs my forearm with both of her steel-strong hands. “Luxie talked to us!” she chatters. “In our heads! Both of us at the same time! Even when Madre Faline had us in the trap, we could hear him. And he told us to stop sucking out her anger and her fear. He told us to push our powers at the big round door he opened up!”

She stops as soon as I jolt. With a whip of motion, I impale my son with a wide-eyed gawk. “Lux. Th-That portal was…yours?”

For a second, the poor kid looks worried. “I only wanted to do good, Mama. Honest.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” I ruffle his thick, soft hair. “I know that. I really do. But…”

“But what, Mama?”

“Son…where’d you make the portal lead to?”

Reece jabs a contemplative fist under his jaw. “Well, shit,” he mumbles. “Didn’t think to ask that.”

I wink quickly his way before Lux takes a messy belly flop into his lap. “Well, well, well. This mere-mortal-husband stuff is kind of fun.”

As I chuckle from the brunt of my man’s irked scowl, Lux supplies, “The lady Faline was sad and angry. She even pretended to be you ’cause she didn’t like her own self.” Abruptly, he stops his absentminded kicks and the itsy-bitsy spiders of his fingers. “I just made her a place that’s quiet and peaceful. Where she can rest now—and not be so mad and sad.”

Ira drops to the ground at Reece’s side. With a matching amount of innocent abandon, she burrows her head against Lux’s tummy while her lavender-tights-covered legs dangle off to the side. “Being mad all the time makes you tired.”